Sunil Kumar – Mihu Expresshttp://mihuexpress.com
Post Your Articles and News FreeWed, 19 Dec 2018 09:16:59 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.9http://mihuexpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/mihu-express-250x250-150x150.jpgSunil Kumar – Mihu Expresshttp://mihuexpress.com
3232Branding Strategy: Learn Tips & Secrets from the Proshttp://mihuexpress.com/branding-strategy-learn-tips-secrets-pros/
Sat, 17 Jun 2017 13:48:48 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=204What is the difference between Clorox household bleach and a generic brand of household bleach? The price is one obvious difference. On average a gallon of the branded Clorox bleach is $3.97. Its generic competitor is about $1.55. What do you think makes intelligent shoppers choose a brand over a generic version? In a nutshell …

]]>What is the difference between Clorox household bleach and a generic brand of household bleach? The price is one obvious difference. On average a gallon of the branded Clorox bleach is $3.97. Its generic competitor is about $1.55. What do you think makes intelligent shoppers choose a brand over a generic version? In a nutshell – a branding strategy.

The Clorox vs. generic bleach has been an ongoing debate and a great brand strategy example.

What is brand strategy? Brand strategy is a plan used across multi-media platforms that communicate a message to the consumer. The message can be direct or indirect. The goal is stand out in the marketplace, be top of mind for a specific product space and make the consumer feel great about his or her choice of the brand/product.

A brand strategy template would begin with a brand positioning strategy. The brand positioning strategy is developed by determining several factors from audience demographics to pricing. One of the best tools to use as a first step is Archetypes in Branding: A Toolkit for Creatives and Strategists, written by Margaret Pott Hartwell and Joshua C. Chen. The authors include 60 archetypes with definitions and attributes. Some notable brands/archetypes include Volkswagen/Explorer, Schwab/Sage, Nike/Hero, etc. Zeroing in on an archetypal character to personify a brand makes sure that all departments clearly understand the brand strategy in order to develop a design strategy.

Branding Design Across Mediums

Any brand building strategy will include customer touch points from social and online to print, television, or radio. A brand marketing strategy is the second step in becoming a branding strategy expert. Become a Branding Expert Download Collection is the strongest brand development strategy program available, featuring top branding experts working in a variety of industries. The cost of this entire collection is just $65, 71 percent off if you purchased them separately. It’s well worth the investment.

In the branding expert collection, Debbie Millman offers a good brand strategy definition in her OnDemand Designcast, Why We Buy, Why We Brand.Millman’s keen sense of strategy design has made her one of the most sought after in the subject. In this Designcast she focuses on multi-brand strategy and how consumers are drawn to some products over others. Knowing what motivates the consumer should never be overlooked. Some companies build a brand development strategy around the product, dress it up and throw it out onto the shelves. To be successful, strategy design should be developed with the eyes of your audience. Your brand strategy template should include these questions: – What problem is my brand solving for the consumer? What will motivate the buyer to choose my brand over competitors?

Does a Branding Strategy Smell?

According to branding expert, Joe Duffy, a brand marketing strategy should include all consumer interactions once it’s launched in the marketplace including sights, sounds and smells. Strategy design takes into account packaging design and marketing as it enters the market.

Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits by Debbie Millman, challenges the traditional brand strategy definition. Millman interviewed 20 world leading designers on their views of corporate brand strategy verses a singular brand building strategy. Can a product brand separate itself from the corporate brand? And, how do corporate leaders/your clients answer, “What is brand strategy?” Their definition will determine your success.

Becoming a branding strategy expert may leave you with more questions than answers. Millman points out, “We are now living in a world with over one hundred brands of bottled water. The United States alone is home to over 45,000 shopping malls. And there are more than 19 million customized beverage choices a barista can whip up at your local Starbucks. Whether it’s good or bad, the real question is why we behave this way in the first place.”

]]>Who should optimize content: SEOs or content writers?http://mihuexpress.com/optimize-content-seos-content-writers/
Sat, 17 Jun 2017 13:14:10 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=201Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing have a lot of overlap, but they’re still separate disciplines. Columnist Stoney deGeyter discusses who should ultimately own content optimization. Stoney deGeyter on June 7, 2017 at 11:03 am MORE Content marketing and SEO are pretty closely related in the digital marketing sphere, but they can also be …

]]>Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing have a lot of overlap, but they’re still separate disciplines. Columnist Stoney deGeyter discusses who should ultimately own content optimization.

Content marketing and SEO are pretty closely related in the digital marketing sphere, but they can also be miles apart in execution. There are certainly some overlapping areas between the two, but is there enough to allow your SEO practitioner to also be your content marketer, or vice versa?

In my (almost) 20 years of performing and overseeing successful digital marketing campaigns, I’ve come across a lot of “jack of all trades” types. I have argued over the years that having one person do everything isn’t a solid model for a high-performing web marketing campaign. After all, the skills required to, say, optimize a PPC campaign are vastly different from those required for organic SEO.

Let’s get back to content and SEO. On-page optimization is a core piece of the optimization process — and that means working with content is part of an SEO’s job. But does that mean that the best person to optimize your content is the SEO specialist? Or should optimizing content be left to the writer — and if so, to what extent?

These are questions I hope to answer here.

Technical vs. creative

SEO is more than the art of getting top search engine rankings. In fact, most of what comprises true SEO has very little to do with art — or even creativity, for that matter. The bulk of an SEO’s time is spent analyzing and fixing site architectural problems.

Most websites — even those built in WordPress — come packed with layers upon layers of issues. I would guess that 50-80% of them are structural in nature, having little to do with the actual content on the page.

But that doesn’t minimize the importance of content in regards to SEO. In fact, there’s something of a circular relationship between the two: Content has a hard time gaining traction in search if the search engines have trouble accessing or analyzing it properly, but fixing site architecture issues is rarely enough to rank well in search results. The content has to be optimized and valuable.

It’s this interdependence between good content and sound technical SEO that can make it difficult for sites with limited budgets to succeed. If you can only pick one, where do you invest your time? Or do you do a little of both and hope for the best?

It’s a tough call. To get results, you need a sufficient amount of both the creative and technical sides of SEO.

The SEO’s role in content

At this point in time, I would argue that very little of SEO is creative in any way. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take creativity to find and implement solutions to the technical problems. I’m just saying that the only creative aspect of SEO is working keywords into the content. And I’m not convinced that should be the job of the SEO.

When it comes to the content portion of the optimization process, the SEO should be in charge of keyword research and selection. It is not the copywriter’s job to go out and do hours worth of in-depth keyword research, or to necessarily be responsible for selecting which keywords should be targeted for any given page.

The job of the copywriter is to integrate the keywords provided by the SEO into the content. The SEO hands the list of keywords to the copywriter, and the copywriter edits, tweaks, rewrites, and adjusts the content accordingly.

Left to the more technically mature SEO, the optimized content would probably be weighed down by keyword usage. A good writer knows how take a list of keywords and shape them naturally into a well-rounded piece of content that covers the topic effectively.

After the keyword research process, the primary function of the SEO in regards to content is to make sure it’s accessible. This means ensuring all pages have a title, description, and unique content — and that the search engine spiders can find it and analyze it properly.

The writer’s role in SEO

Today, I would argue that the content writer needs to know more about SEO than the SEO needs to know about writing content. This is because writing incredible, optimized content requires some understanding of how search engines work and what they are looking for.

The writer should always start out focusing on the visitor. Meet their needs first and foremost. But they can’t neglect the preferences of the search engines. The content should be created to serve both simultaneously.

Without this knowledge, the content will likely be subjected to rewrites after the SEO reviews it. Might as well save yourself the time and have your writer dig a bit into SEO so they can cover the bulk of what search engines want on the first pass. The SEO should still review and send suggestions back to the writer if necessary, and in very rare occasions they can tweak the content themselves. But this is one place where I would let the writer do the SEO’s job!

Everyone has a role

Is it a good idea for your SEO to have some grasp of what makes content good? Absolutely. But very few people are both technical and creative at the same time. My recommendation would be to allow your SEO to focus on the technical and your writer on the creative. But it’s not a bad idea for any writer to have to have a technical grasp of what makes content great in the eyes of the search engines.

No one expects the writer to be an SEO. Nor should your SEO be a writer. They each have their place. Where the two roles overlap, they should work together to create a masterful finished product.

When you allow each person to stay focused in their primary role, you’ll get content that is search engine optimized, brings in targeted traffic, provides your visitors the information they need, and helps move them through the sales process. Keywords will be utilized, but only as required to get the job done.

]]>2 Powerful Google Analytics Metrics Tahat Can Improve Your Search Rankingshttp://mihuexpress.com/2-powerful-google-analytics-metrics-tahat-can-improve-search-rankings/
Sat, 17 Jun 2017 13:09:43 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=198Google Analytics is one of the most used analytics tools. It’s used by some 28 million websites worldwide. It’s an easy tool to use and comes with no cost. On one hand, when you effectively track your website’s traffic, sales, and revenue, you will start to understand your target audience better. You’ll ultimately drive more …

On the other hand, not tracking your website’s metrics is a huge disservice to your business.

And of course, when you first start out you need to learn how to use any analytics tool. For a sophisticated analytics tool like Google Analytics, it won’t be of much help if you don’t know how to use it and what to track with it.

More importantly, the insights that you draw from the analytics make all the difference.

The truth is, not many people know what metrics to measure and how to make sense of them. I’ll show you how.

But first, let’s get the basics out of the way.

A common Google Analytics mistake

Businesses make a lot of mistakes when using Google Analytics. Some of them confuse views with visits while others aren’t sure of causation and correlation.

But the biggest mistake that businesses make is that they use the tool to track website traffic – and that’s all.

For them, Google Analytics is all about seeing how much traffic your website gets every month (or week). They never go beyond this single metric.

According to Jayson DeMers, “most of the inexperienced users only rely on a single and most familiar metric.” This strategy is acceptable for a few months when your business is new, but relying on a single metric after 6 months could hinder your business’ growth.

In reality, Google Analytics helps you measure a whole lot of metrics (both vanity and actionable metrics) which you need to make informed decisions on the direction that your website is going.

For instance, the “User Behavior Analysis” helps you understand what users do when they arrive at your website.

If you want to improve your search rankings, you’ve got to understand that measuring the behavior of website visitors is more crucial and meaningful as compared to simply tracking the monthly visits and new sessions.

For instance, if you’re getting a lot of traffic but the conversion rate is under 1%. No matter how large that 1% might be, I don’t think it’s encouraging. So what are you expected to do?

Well, this is where behavior analytics comes to the rescue.

The “Behavior Flow” metric will show what visitors did when they’re on your website, the page they exited and what type of content they like the most.

With that said, there are two powerful metrics in Google Analytics that will give you deeper insights about your users. I like to call these the “user-centric metrics.”

If you optimize for both of them and make decisions based on them, you’ll not only improve your rankings in the SERPs, but you’ll dramatically boost user engagement and experience. Yes, they’re that powerful!

The two powerful metrics are:

Bounce rate

Percent of new sessions

Metric #1: Bounce rate

If you’re just starting out, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing a single web page.

However, this is an average bounce rate for all your web pages combined. You need to check bounce rates for individual web pages (including posts and pages) to be 100% sure. And to do that, click on Bahavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Seeing the bounce rate in Google Analytics isn’t a big deal, you already knew it. But the steps that you take after viewing your bounce rate is what will determine whether you have opportunities to boost your organic search visibility or simply continue with what you’re already doing.

So, if your website had a 64% bounce rate, what does it mean and what are you expected to do?

The first step is to compare it with the industry average bounce rate.

Bear in mind that finding an accurate average bounce rate for every industry is somewhat impossible. But there are several sources that will help you make a rough guess.

KISSmetrics published an infographic with average industry bounce rate:

“Pogo-sticking is when the searcher clicks on a link on a SERP, sees that it’s not what he or she is looking for, and immediately bounces off by hitting the back button.”

In a nutshell, it’s a situation whereby a user clicks on a search result and quickly goes back to the search engine, clicks on the next result, returns back, and so on. They are looking for a website that satisfies their query.

If you get rid of pogo-stick and improve user experience ― this will send a signal to Google that users are now happier with your web page. Your content is now useful and well-researched. You no longer write on generic topics, but rather, you go in-depth.

And you have a great navigation and internal structure ― which allows website visitors to click-through to another page while getting answers to their questions.

It’s beyond creating quality content. Because the word “quality” is relative. What I perceive as quality content may not impress you at all.

Therefore, the solution is to create content that addresses your customer’s questions. You want them to read the article, watch the video, listen to your podcast, and not consider another resource or blog.

First, did you know that the Percent of New Sessions is an engagement metric? It’s a measure of user satisfaction.

A high percentage of New Sessions means that visitors who land on your website visit multiple pages. It’s a measure of stickiness of your website.

A low percentage means that the majority of the visitors don’t have multiple sessions on your website. Users don’t like having multiple sessions with your website.

You have to make sure that the % New Sessions is high because it means new visitors are finding your website through search engines and are sticking to it.

When a user doesn’t return to the search results page after clicking on your website, all things being equal, it’s a signal that they are satisfied. This satisfaction signal improves your website’s ranking.

Google will push your website to the top with an intention to serve the best results that will satisfy users.

To show you how impactful this can be, CognitiveSEO posted an article on Reddit one normal day. They received 20K new visits in a day from Reddit.

A spike in the percentage of new sessions will surely give your website a great boost in SERPs. Because users want to discover new content that improves their lives in one way or the other. And if users are satisfied, Googlebot will likely be.

Search engines try to serve pages that a lot of people are already visiting and are clicking on.

For this reason, the title and meta description of your web pages should be beneficial and irresistible so that new visitors who find your listing in the organic results for a given keyword (e.g., content marketing strategy plan) can be drawn in, and click-through to your website.

Conclusion

These two Google Analytics metrics are exceptionally powerful and are helpful in improving your search ranking. Why? Because bounce rate and % New Sessions are direct signals from user’s behavior.

Analyzing and making sense of these two metrics (and all the others) is your primary responsibility as a website owner or website administrator.

From my personal experience, if you spend 80% of your time working on reducing your bounce rate and increasing % New Sessions, you’ll indirectly influence other metrics including page views, Avg. Session Duration, and Goal Conversion Rate.

]]>Tracking Conversions With Google Analyticshttp://mihuexpress.com/tracking-conversions-google-analytics/
Sat, 17 Jun 2017 13:05:36 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=194This post was updated on May 5, 2017 Mature self-serve ad platforms like Google AdWords, Bing Ads & Facebook Ads each offer their own proprietary tools to track conversions generated by ads. Or measuring conversions from other traffic sources like LinkedIn Ads that just started with conversion tracking solutions. In this post, I’ll walk you through tracking …

Mature self-serve ad platforms like Google AdWords, Bing Ads & Facebook Ads each offer their own proprietary tools to track conversions generated by ads. Or measuring conversions from other traffic sources like LinkedIn Ads that just started with conversion tracking solutions. In this post, I’ll walk you through tracking conversions from any traffic source with the help of Google Analytics and their custom reports.

What Are Conversions?

A conversion takes place when a visitor to your site takes an action you care about and “converts” to a customer. This could be through filling out a form, completing a purchase, or by simply showing a high level of engagement with your site. This post will help you define and measure which traffic sources result in conversions.

How to Track Conversions

If you’re already using Google Analytics, all it takes is a defined goal and a special URL that reveals the source of the click. If you haven’t installed Google Analytics yet, you can learn to configure it here.

Step 1: Build your tracking URL

You’ll need to use the Google Analytics URL Builder to tag your URLs with custom campaign tracking parameters. Simply fill out the form by inserting your landing page URL along with the rest of the campaign details.

For example, if I’m trying to track conversions from a new LinkedIn Ads campaign, I’d fill out the form as follows:

Website URL This is the URL of the page you are linking to:
https://www.adstage.io/

Campaign Source This will record the campaign’s source:
LinkedIn

Campaign Medium This will record the type of campaign:
cpc

Campaign Term This can be used to record the keyword that is being targeted:(blank)

Campaign Content This can be used to record the ad that was shown:
clear-ppc-reporting

Campaign Name This will record the campaign’s name:
AdStage-For-In-House-Marketers

Step 2: Use your tracking URL

Now take your new URL and use it in your campaign in place of your standard URL.

Google Analytics will assume that anybody that clicks this URL is from this campaign. Consequently, it will attribute any actions they take to this campaign as well.

Step 3: Define your goal

If you don’t have them set up already, you’ll need to create goals in Google Analytics for the conversions you want to track.

For example, if you’re an e-commerce site, you’ll want to track shopping cart checkouts. You can do this by creating a goal that counts visits to the URL of the order confirmation page that customers see when they complete their order.

To create you goal in Google Analytics, follow these steps:

Click “Admin” in the navigation bar.

Click “Goals” under View.

Click “+New Goal”.

Create your goal by following the wizard.

Once you’ve created your goal, Google Analytics will track your goal performance and attribute it to the appropriate sources.

Creating Custom Reports

When you’ve created your goals in Google Analytics and you’ve tagged your ad URLs, you’ll be able to create easy-to-read reports that reveal your campaign’s performance. My favorite way of viewing this data is with Custom Reports in Google Analytics.

To create your first custom report follow these simple steps:

Click “Customization” in the navigation bar.

Click “+New Custom Report.”

Give it a title.

Click “+ add metric” and choose the metric columns you’d like to see. Search for the goal you just created and select the metric for Completions [e.g., Purchases (Goal 1 Completions)]. This will show you the number of conversions of this type. You can add multiple metrics columns.

Click “+ add dimension” and choose how you would like to break up the data in rows. You can also add multiple dimensions in order to drill down into each successive level. I suggest adding “Source / Medium” as the first dimension, then “Campaign.”

Click “Save” and you’ll be presented with a beautiful custom report to measure your conversion performance.

With these steps, you can measure conversions across any digital source easily!

]]>Facebook Video Retargeting for Live Video and Beyondhttp://mihuexpress.com/facebook-video-retargeting-live-video-beyond/
Tue, 13 Jun 2017 05:23:21 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=173Do you post videos on Facebook? Have you tried retargeting your live and uploaded videos? To explore techniques for retargeting your videos, I interview Amanda Bond. More About This Show The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover …

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Amanda Bond, who’s known as the “Ad Strategist” specializing in Facebook ads. Amanda also advises top social pros and has taught the ADdicted Facebook Ads course. Online, she’s known simply as Bond.

Amanda explores Facebook video ads and retargeting.

You’ll discover how to use Amanda’s technique to warm up your Facebook followers.

Facebook Video Retargeting for Live Video and Beyond featuring insights from Amanda Bond on the Social Media Marketing podcast.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.

Facebook Video Retargeting for Live Video and Beyond

Amanda’s Story

Before Amanda started working in social media marketing, she worked with big brands such as Pepsi and Labatt. As a salesperson for Pepsi, she went door to door to compete with Coke. After she sent two truckloads of Pepsi to a store for a large sale, Coke sent three. Looking over 110 pallets of pop, Amanda realized that the impact she was having in her sales role wasn’t aligned with where she wanted to show up in the world.

To move forward, Amanda decided to give back through her local Rotary service club.

As the club’s youngest member, she was encouraged to become their social media manager. When Amanda started working with her Rotary club in 2013, social media marketing felt like magic. Talking to people on the Internet seemed to create relationships out of thin air. However, Amanda quickly learned the impact of social when she used social media marketing for a live local Rotary event.

To promote the event, the Rotary club used traditional marketing such as ads in the newspaper, and Amanda used everything she’d been learning about social media marketing. Throughout the weekend, the club expected 4,000 people to attend, but 23,000 people actually came, largely due to social media.

Success in social media led Amanda (a.k.a. Bond) to become the Ad Strategist.

That was Amanda’s impetus to change direction in her career and she became a social media manager. As she became more versed in Facebook ads, she found that being an ad strategist was a great niche for her as a math and data nerd. Amanda now teaches and helps other businesses behind the scenes. She loves doing the deep dives into the data, helping people see the story the numbers are telling.

Listen to the show to hear about Social Media Examiner’s role in Amanda’s early social media marketing efforts.

What Retargeting Means

The words retargeting and remarketing are interchangeable. Most people know about retargeting through the Facebook pixel, which is a tiny code snippet you add to your website. When someone lands on a page with this code, the Facebook pixel sends a message back to Facebook, saying something important is happening.

Facebook has opened up new ways to retarget people (or show them content or ads based on prior actions), including video retargeting.

Because Facebook has been emphasizing live video and video in the news feed, Amanda is especially excited about these video retargeting features. Anytime somebody sees at least three seconds of a video (recorded or live), Facebook takes note of who they are and puts them into a retargeting custom audience that you can use to retarget them again and again.

Facebook lets you retarget people based on video views.

I ask why you would want to retarget someone who watched a Facebook video. Amanda says it’s part of getting people to know, like, and trust your brand. You want to start nurturing conversations that may lead to a sales transaction. As the Ad Strategist, she calls this framework “Connect, Convert, Close.”

In that connection phase, your audience may be cold (they may not know or have heard of you), so you have to warm them up before going for the sale. Facebook is an easily consumable medium for warming up audiences because users are constantly scrolling through their timelines, seeing and interacting with videos. When you keep that entire interaction on Facebook, it’s easy to nurture those relationships and warm people up to your brand.

To create a video custom audience, you don’t have to do anything before you go live or upload recorded video. As long as you go live or upload video to your Facebook business page, Facebook automatically creates the audience for you. (This functionality doesn’t work with videos on your Facebook groups or your personal page.) The custom audience will include anyone who watches at least three seconds of any video on your Facebook business page.

Create a custom audience and choose the length of time someone had to watch to go into that audience.

From that automatically created custom audience, you’ll want to set up your desired options. You can refine the custom audience based on how long someone watched the video and which video someone watched.

For example, Amanda says you can choose an individual video or create an aggregate of all of your video viewers. If you’re launching something and need a large audience, you could group viewers all together. If you’re looking to create a specific follow-up sequence, you might select one video at a time.

To set up your options, open your Audience dashboard inside Facebook Ads Manager. Click Create a Custom Video Audience. Next, choose how long the person had to watch to go into that audience. It starts at 3 seconds, goes to 10 seconds, and then to 25%, 50%, 75%, and 95% of the video viewed. Then, select whether people who watched any video or a specific video see your ad.

Amanda compares a three-second viewer with someone who watched 95% of your video to illustrate the applications of custom audiences.

For instance, say you have a 15-minute video with excellent, actionable content that goes to a sales page that’s highly relevant to the same topic. If someone consumed 95% of the video, they’re highly engaged. So ask them to take the next step in your relationship. Send them to a lead magnet or retarget them with a sales page. You can take quicker action with someone who watched a longer portion of your video.

Use the duration of video views to guide your remarketing.

On the flipside, you want to run retargeting ads to your three-second viewers too, because they have a branding impression of you from when they saw your video in their timeline. However, instead of asking them to share their email or sending them to a sales page, nurture that relationship. One way to do that is to show them another relevant piece of video content, something that adds more value to whatever your brand is offering.

Amanda says you could also set up the retargeting like a game. For example, tell viewers they’ll see bonus content if they watch for 10 seconds and an even more valuable offer if they watch 50% of the video. (Facebook changes the predetermined increments from seconds to percentages after a certain timeframe.)

Next, I ask about targeting live viewers versus people who watch the replay. Amanda says Facebook pushes live video because of the natural engagement. And it’s a great way to reach a larger audience. However, in your custom audience for retargeting, the distinction between live and replay viewers doesn’t matter. Facebook groups the metrics (who watched live and who watched the replay) together.

For instance, you go live for 15 minutes and get 1,000 views. Afterwards, the news feed continues to serve your video to people who like your page and to the friends of people who have engaged with the post, and you get an extra 500 views in the next 24 hours. All 1,500 people go into the retargeting audience.

To illustrate how you can combine custom audiences for retargeting, Amanda shares some exciting examples. For instance, you can retarget a specific set of video viewers by combining custom audiences of people who watched different videos.

Combine people who watched different videos into a custom audience.

For the first video, set up an audience of people who watched 95%.

For the second video, set up one audience of people who watched 3 seconds and another audience of people who watched 10 seconds. Then you can exclude anyone who watched more than 3 seconds by telling Facebook to exclude anyone in the 10-second audience. You want to exclude anyone who watched more than 10 seconds because the 3-second audience refers to people who watched 3 seconds or more. The resulting audience could be 100,000 people.

After all those audiences are set up, you can retarget them creatively. For example, with the first video, you want to identify the people who are sticking around longer. They are hyper-engaged, which is a sign they’re ready to potentially take your relationship further or look at one of your sales offers. You can then say anyone who watches to the 95% mark will start seeing the second video.

Those who don’t make it to 10 seconds on the second video can get a third video. Because the viewer has showed signs of engagement, you can use a cheeky tone in the timeline and say, “Hey, we started something here, but you left.” Customize the dynamic of the conversation to the different actions people are taking on Facebook.

There’s also an option to target engagement in the Audience dashboard, which includes anyone who gives a reaction, likes, comments, or even clicks on your ad. You can even retarget anyone who interacts with your page.

You can retarget anyone who interacts with your page.

Listen to the show to hear Amanda and me discuss more retargeting features, including options Facebook may roll out soon.

Applications for Retargeting

Amanda shares an example from one of her clients, communications stylist Nikki Elledge Brown, who has a copywriting program. Nikki’s prospects, who may not be aware of who she is, see a short and actionable video ad that teaches something fun. Anyone who watches 25% of that video from Nikki’s Facebook page gets retargeted with a registration to jump on the Write Your Site webinar.

Because the short video is educational and builds trust, viewers are more likely to opt into the webinar. This opt-in improves their relevancy score on Facebook, which will then serve the ad to more people for less cost.

You can set the retargeting ad to show immediately after someone watches the video or set a delay. Amanda and Nikki tested going straight to the webinar registration and it worked wonderfully. If it hadn’t worked so well, they would have tested showing another video before showing the webinar registration or waiting a day or two between the video and the retargeting ad. The beauty is you can create a sequence that fits your results.

You can also monitor and adjust retargeting by device. For example, people may sign up for an email or webinar on desktop or mobile, but purchases may lean heavily toward desktop users. In this case, when you retarget content for people who are ready for a purchase, you can show that content only to people on desktop devices.

Adjust your retargeting ad placement by device.

When I ask if there are any pitfalls to avoid, Amanda suggests not over-complicating retargeting off the bat. There are many ways to over-segment and it gets confusing fast. As you test things, go slowly. Isolate each variable to understand what’s working.

For instance, for your first video, see if people are watching it and for how long. Then put in your retargeting ad. Then find out if people are clicking the ad, what happens when they get to the landing page, and what the conversion rate is. After you have this information, you develop a clear understanding of what’s working and what isn’t. Stop guessing and focus on the results you get, which will tell you the next step to take.

As far as budgets are concerned, if you’re doing an ad campaign and set it to optimize for video views, you can get views for fractions of a cent to 10 cents. From there, starting the retargeting process is also cost-effective.

Start with $5 or $10 a day on one video. Then, for $1 a day, retarget people who are taking certain actions. As long as people are indicating that they’re interested in your content, it’s valuable to take a small audience to that next step in the conversation.

Begin your retargeting with a $5 spend.

Amanda has some clients whose retargeting audience is zero on some days and 27 on others. However, Amanda’s clients continue running those ads because when prospects come into the pipeline, those people get the exact information the client wants them to see.

In 99% of Amanda’s tests, she finds it’s economical to retarget people because they develop a brand affinity. They’ll pause because they know that face or click to register for a webinar or check out a sales page. You’re no longer a stranger in the news feed trying to sell them something. You’re at the beginning of a relationship.

Listen to the show to hear Amanda discuss viewing data in Facebook Insights versus Ads Manager.

Facebook Live Video Retargeting

When you have Facebook Live videos, you can download and repurpose them in bite-sized snippets to get the main points across. Or you can simply amplify your Facebook Live video because it already has the social proof of reactions, comments, and shares.

Amanda recommends syndication to her clients who have Facebook Live shows; that is, you broadcast from one place but invite people to tune in from several places.

Invite people in several places to watch your Live video to increase the number of people in your three-second views audience.

If you have a Facebook group and a personal page with a similar and relevant audience, you or somebody on your team can invite people in those places to join your live video stream. So in the timeline, there will be several points of entry, instead of just one. Then anyone who sees the video anywhere for three seconds or more goes into your custom audience.

Also, ask your live audience to share. All that sharing gives the Facebook algorithm more cues that your content is relevant. This relevance is important with Facebook ads, because the more relevant your content, the less you pay to get in front of eyeballs. Facebook rewards relevance.

I ask what retargeting ads people might use after their live video, especially regular live video. Amanda suggests setting up a retargeting ad that leads fans to some type of sales process. Try to determine if the ad delivers a positive monetary ROI. If the money you spend on the ad generates more monetary value (i.e., you spend a dollar but generate more than a dollar), that financial return suggests that spending more of your ad budget to grow your show will be worthwhile.

In other words, you want the people who are watching your live video to convert to your email list, get into your sales funnel, and ultimately become customers. If that retargeting ad is working, and you’re showing positive return on your ad spend, go back and amplify the live video to a larger audience.

Listen to the show to discover incentives that prompt people who are watching your videos to take action.

Discovery of the Week

Swipeable is a mobile app that turns a panoramic or 360-degree photo into a carousel of images for Instagram.

To use the app, upload an image, and Swipeable splits it into a series of square images. Swipeable uses your whole panorama or 360-degree photo, so if you want to crop anything, do that before you use Swipeable to create your carousel. You can have up to 10 images.

Swipeable is a free app that’s currently available only for iOS; however, look for an Android version soon.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how Swipeable works for you.

]]>Anand Mahindra gets emotional as India’s national anthem plays for first time at Formula E race, watch videohttp://mihuexpress.com/anand-mahindra-gets-emotional-indias-national-anthem-plays-first-time-formula-e-race-watch-video/
Tue, 13 Jun 2017 05:22:47 +0000http://mihuexpress.com/?p=171India’s Mahindra Racing team won their first Formula E electric series on Saturday after Swedish driver Felix Rosenqvist emerged victorious in the first of two Berlin ePrix races. It was a historic day for both the driver and the team as they saw their maiden victories. Mahindra and his team were beyond themselves as their …

]]>India’s Mahindra Racing team won their first Formula E electric series on Saturday after Swedish driver Felix Rosenqvist emerged victorious in the first of two Berlin ePrix races. It was a historic day for both the driver and the team as they saw their maiden victories.

Mahindra and his team were beyond themselves as their Swedish driver finished first on on the podium. The special occasion left Anand Mahindra, the chairman and director of Mahindra group, emotional who posted on his social media account that even though Twitter allowed 140 characters, he did not need them. “I stood and wept…Jai ho,” wrote Mahindra after the Indian national anthem played for the first time at the Formula E race in Berlin.

Mahindra remembered the day Chetan Maini came to his office to recommend them to join the FIA Formula E. “Finally,I remember the day @MainiChetan you came to my office and recommended we join @FIAformulaE Thank you, Chetan. I haven’t forgotten,” wrote Mahindra in another emotional tweet.